My mother, aged 64, has been diagnosed with Carcinoma Lung stage IV with bone, liver, and adrenal metastasis. This was diagnosed on 31st March (Apollo Hospital, Bannerghatta Rod).
Since then I and my family are not able to answer following questions and need your advice for the same:
1. We have not yet told her about it. Shall we inform her or not?
2. Doctors’ from Apollo Hospital and few others we consulted are saying that there is no chance of cure. However they recommend to start chemotherapy to prolong life. But we are getting conflicting opinions with regards to chemotherapy
a. Some suggest inform her about it and start the treatment
b. And others are questioning what is wrong with the current quality of life. They are telling that the chemotherapy is very hard on patients with unknown side effects. They question what is interest to extend life if she will only lie in bed and needs your help for her regular activities which she is able to do on her own now.

I also consulted DS Research centre which treats cancer with Nutrient energy through their medicines. This is the only place which are talking positive with respect to cure and ensuring no side effects. So this is an alternate treatment.
Please guide me with regards to these questions and the right treatment that I start. I could not upload the discharge summary. Let me know do I share it with you with other reports that you would like to look at.

Please communicate on both YYYY@YYYY and YYYY@YYYY as sometimes I don’t have access to my official email id.

Unfortunately your mom has developed stage IV lung cancer which is incurable as of now. Chemotherapy may prolong survival to around 12 months if she is fit enough to tolerate it (like up and about for most of the time with normal blood counts, liver and renal function tests). Otherwise the survival is around 3-6 months.

However, there are some oral drugs (gefitinib, erlotinib) which also work well if the patient is harboring some specific mutations (EGFR) in the tumor. This needs to be tested on the biopsy specimen. These drugs in general are much less toxic than chemo. Even chemo tolerance varies from patient to patient and some patients do have improved quality of life with chemo.

I strongly believe that patient should know the diagnosis as well as the expected outcome as it may help her to plan things out, and of course it is her life after all.

Regarding alternative treatment they don't have any evidence for their claims and we don't see such 'cures' in real life.

Hope I have answered your query. I will be available for further followup queries, if any.